Advisory Panel Hears from Attorneys on Truck Crash Fault

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A special advisory panel studying the federal Compliance, Safety, Accountability program heard conflicting opinions from two accident litigators on the merits of police accident reports as the basis for assessing blame in truck-involved crashes.

St. Louis trucking attorney Ted Perryman chided the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s policy of listing all of a carrier’s accidents over the past two years in the company’s CSA safety measurement system profile without indicating which accidents were the carrier’s fault.

“It’s wrong to lump all crashes together,” Perryman told the panel of outside stakeholders at its Sept. 11 meeting.

Perryman said FMCSA should list only those accidents on a carrier’s profile or include in its private Crash Indicator category those crashes in which a police accident report determined the carrier contributed to the cause of the accident.

But Kansas City, Mo., plaintiffs’ attorney Jeffrey Burns told subcommittee members that he agrees with FMCSA’s contention that a carrier who is involved in an accident — whether it’s the carrier’s fault — is more likely to be involved in a future crash.

Burns also said that police accident reports cannot always determine whether a motor carrier could have prevented the accident.

“Crashes are not only caused by violations listed in police accident reports,” Burns said.

In addition, sometimes police reports are not complete or are inaccurate, and can be based on false statements, especially when an injured party in the accident has died or gone to the hospital.